HARTFORD — Experts spent hours explaining deficiencies in the state's mental health system to a special General Assembly task force Tuesday, but it was a Sandy Hook Elementary School parent who left them speechless.

Jennifer Maksel, whose first-grade son survived the Dec. 14 school massacre in Newtown, said she has been fighting for nine years to get mental health services for her older son.

"I don't want another tragedy," said Maksel, who told legislators about her struggles with her 12-year-old, who suffers from a range of diagnoses, including Asperger's syndrome and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

"Do I think he would do it? I don't think so. But who knows? He's 12 years old. … If I don't give him social skills to prepare himself for when he's 18, what am I going to do?"

"I have been fighting for years to get him services. He does not have very good social skills. He's abusive to his family. He's abusive to his brothers when he doesn't get his own way,'' Maksel said. "After the 14th I actually had to use that and tell him see where anger gets you if you don't knock this off and get it under some sort of control."

Although police have provided few details about 20-year-old gunman Adam Lanza's mental state, lawmakers have embarked on a comprehensive review of mental health policies as well as school safety procedures and gun laws following the tragedy.

The Bipartisan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention and Children's Safety is holding a series of public hearings; the information gleaned will be used to draft a major bill that legislative leaders say they want to pass by the end of February.

The crowd at Tuesday's hearing was far smaller than the more than 2,000 people who turned out for Monday's marathon session on guns. Yet many of those who came brought deeply personal, often gut-wrenching stories of a dysfunctional mental health system.

In voices heavy with heartache, they pleaded for a new approach to reaching troubled young people, removing the stigma from psychiatric illness and fixing a frayed mental health system.

Jeremy Richman and Jennifer Hensel lost their only child, a curly-haired 6-year-old named Avielle, in the massacre at Sandy Hook; she was one of 20 children and six educators killed on Dec. 14.

"Sickened with grief, we ask ourselves what drives someone to commit such shockingly cruel acts of violence? This was not an impulsive act, this was planned with an apparent goal of achieving infamy," Richman said.

"We must act to ensure this doesn't happen again,'" he said. "I ask you as a parent, as a responsible member of many communities and as a citizen of the United States of America to help craft policies that will protect our precious loved ones from this type of violence.'"

Lawmakers heard about barriers to psychiatric care, especially for adolescents, from a lack of available therapists to insurance rules that provide limited coverage for psychiatric care.

"There are not enough child psychiatrists to treat the children that we refer," said Dr. Kenneth N. Spiegelman, a pediatrician in Manchester.

In the emergency room at Connecticut Children's Medical Center, the 35 medical beds are often disproportionately filled by children who are in acute psychiatric crisis, awaiting assessment and placement, Spiegelman said. "This puts a huge burden on our entire health care system on a daily basis.''

The doctor cited the example of a 13-year-old girl who recently came into his office. The girl was cutting herself and showing signs of depression. Spiegelman gave the teen's mother the names of five to 10 child psychiatrists.

"The mother called me back about a week later that she could not get into any one of them," Spiegelman told the task force. "They either did not take her insurance ... [or] are not taking any insurance at all."

The panel also heard from experts who favor changing the law to allow judges to order people with mental illness to obtain outpatient treatment – as well as those who oppose it.

Dr. Harold I. Schwartz, psychiatrist-in-chief at Hartford Hospital's Institute of Living, strongly supported legislation authorizing involuntary outpatient treatment. "Chronic schizophrenia and certain other chronic and severe mental illnesses are often marked by denial of illness," he said. "The failure to recognize illness and the need for treatment … is a function of the disease's impact on the brain – not unlike the stroke victim who is unable to recognize that one side of the body is paralyzed."

Schwartz said he understands the importance of balancing a patient's civil liberties with the medical need for treatment. But, he added, "in our efforts to protect autonomy we are acting to protect the decision making of individuals whose capacity for autonomous decision making has been severely impaired by mental illness."